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China Suspends Visas for Japan, South Korea Over COVID-19 Testing

China Suspends Visas for Japan, South Korea Over COVID-19 Testing

On Tuesday, Chins’s embassies suspended the issuance of new visas to South Koreans and Japanese, ostensibly in retaliation for COVID-19 testing requirements recently imposed by those countries on Chinese travelers.

The suspensions were announced in brief online notices by the embassies in Tokyo and Seoul.

According to the Seoul notice, which was posted on the embassy’s WeChat social media account, the ban would remain in effect until South Korea lifted its “discriminatory entry measures” against China. The announcement included information on tourist, business, and other visas.

Last week, China’s Foreign Ministry threatened countermeasures against countries that announced new virus testing requirements for Chinese travelers. At least ten in Europe, North America, and Asia have recently done so, with officials in China concerned about a lack of information about rapidly spreading virus outbreaks.

It was unclear why South Korea and Japan were singled out, or whether the suspensions would be extended to other countries that have imposed virus testing on Chinese passengers.

The Chinese embassy in Tokyo only stated that visa issuance had been halted. The announcements appeared to apply only to new applicants, with no mention of people who already had visas.

china

China’s Covid pandemic

South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that “our government’s step to strengthen anti-virus measures on passengers arriving from China is based on scientific and objective evidence. We have communicated with the Chinese side in advance and have provided information to the international community in a transparent manner.”

It would be “regrettable,” according to a Japanese Foreign Ministry official, if restrictions were imposed. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity, as is customary.

Withholding visas from South Korean or Japanese business people could stall a hoped-for revival of commercial activity and potential new investment in the aftermath of China’s abrupt lifting of anti-virus controls last month.

Business groups had previously warned that global companies were shifting investment plans away from China because the pandemic controls made it difficult for foreign executives to visit. Over the last three years, a few foreign auto and other executives have visited China, but many companies have relied on Chinese employees or managers already in the country to run their operations.

According to the owner of a South Korean restaurant in Beijing, the announcement forced friends to cancel their plans to visit China. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was concerned about the impact on his business. He also stated that he is preparing to renew his Chinese work visa and is unsure if this will be affected.

Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang “expressed concern” about South Korea’s measures to his counterpart, Foreign Minister Park Jin, in a phone call on Monday before the visa suspension was announced. “I hope that the South Korean side will maintain an objective and scientific attitude,” Qin said.

 

China Fine-Tunes COVID Policy As Beijing, Shenzhen Loosen More Curbs

Testing upon arrival

China’s action appeared to be motivated by its demands that its citizens be treated equally with those of other countries. A dozen countries have followed the United States in requiring either a negative test before leaving China or a virus test upon arrival at the airport, or both.

“Unfortunately, a handful of countries have insisted on taking discriminatory entry restriction measures targeting China, despite science and facts and domestic reality,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin on Tuesday. “China strongly rejected this and responded in kind.”

When asked if new visas for South Koreans and Japanese had been suspended, he only said that he had “made it very clear.”

China has been accused by the World Health Organization and several nations of withholding data on its outbreak. A WHO official said on Tuesday that the Chinese outbreak poses no immediate threat to the European region, but that more information is needed.

According to China’s ambassador to Australia, the response of those countries to China’s COVID-19 outbreak was neither proportionate nor constructive.

Xiao Qian told reporters in Canberra that China’s strategy had shifted from preventing infections to preventing severe cases late last year. Countries, he said, should use a science-based response.

“If they’re aimed at China, entry restrictions are unnecessary,” the ambassador told reporters.

South Korea’s once-cordial relations with China, its largest trading partner, deteriorated after Beijing targeted businesses, sports teams, and even K-pop groups to protest the deployment of an advanced US anti-missile system in South Korea.

China and Xi Jinping Face Five Major Challenges in 2023

China’s reversal of Zero-covid policy

Last month, China abruptly reversed its strict pandemic containment requirements in response to what it claims is a changing nature of the outbreak. This followed three years of lockdowns, quarantines, and mass testing, which prompted rare politically charged street protests in Beijing and other major cities.

According to the most optimistic forecasts, China’s business and consumer activity could resume as soon as the first quarter of this year. But, before that happens, entrepreneurs and families are feeling the pinch of a virus outbreak that has left employers short of healthy workers and kept customers away from shopping malls, restaurants, hair salons, and gyms.

Forecasters say Xi’s government’s decision to lift controls that had shut down factories and kept millions of people at home will hasten economic recovery, but it may disrupt activity this year as businesses scramble to adapt.

With the start of the Lunar New Year travel rush, which is set to accelerate in the coming days, China is now facing a surge in cases and hospitalizations in major cities, and is bracing for a further spread into less developed areas. While international flights remain reduced, authorities predict that domestic rail and air travel will more than double compared to the same period last year.

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Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

Google

Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.

According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.

Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.

google

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.

Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.

Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.

To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.

Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.

On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.

In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.

Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.

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Pixa Bay

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.

TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.

When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.

And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.

Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.

A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.

google

Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.

But today, it feels more like reality.

Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.

Could we remember Google in the same way that we remember Yahoo or Ask Jeeves in decades? These next few years could be significant.

SOURCE | CNN

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2024 | Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

trump

Washington — Trump Media,  The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will not hear an appeal from social media platform X about a search warrant acquired by prosecutors in the election meddling case against former President Donald Trump.

The justices did not explain their rationale, and there were no recorded dissents.

The firm, which was known as Twitter before being purchased by billionaire Elon Musk, claims a nondisclosure order that prevented it from informing Trump about the warrant obtained by special counsel Jack Smith’s team violated its First Amendment rights.

The business also claims Trump should have had an opportunity to exercise executive privilege. If not reined in, the government may employ similar tactics to intercept additional privileged communications, their lawyers contended.

trump

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

Two neutral electronic privacy groups also joined in, urging the high court to hear the case on First Amendment grounds.

Prosecutors, however, claim that the corporation never shown that Trump utilized the account for official purposes, therefore executive privilege is not a problem. A lower court also determined that informing Trump could have compromised the current probe.

trump

Trump utilized his Twitter account in the weeks preceding up to his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to spread false assertions about the election, which prosecutors claim were intended to create doubt in the democratic process.

The indictment describes how Trump used his Twitter account to encourage his followers to travel to Washington on Jan. 6, pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject the certification, and falsely claiming that the Capitol crowd, which battered police officers and destroyed glass, was peaceful.

musk trump

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

That case is now moving forward following the Supreme Court’s verdict in July, which granted Trump full immunity from criminal prosecution as a former president.

The warrant arrived at Twitter amid quick changes implemented by Musk, who bought the company in 2022 and has since cut off most of its workforce, including those dedicated to combating disinformation and hate speech.

He also welcomed back a vast list of previously banned users, including Trump, and endorsed him for the 2024 presidential election.

SOURCE | AP

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The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.

Supreme Court

(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.

The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.

Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.

This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.

In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.

The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.

This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.

The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.

In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.

According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.

Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.

The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.

For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.

Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.

As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.

As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.

The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.

SOURCE: AP

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Scientists Awarded MicroRNA The Nobel Prize in Medicine.

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